It's all Stallone's fault.

[rpolinski]

Has anyone else noticed that the start of Cart's decline co-incided with the release of Driven.

[Lee Janotta]

Nah, it started before that.... It really become apparent when they cancelled Rio and then backed out of the Texas race at the last minute, apparently lacking the sense to quickly set up the cars and use the infield road course so they could still fullfill the contractual obligations and not alienate a bunch of ticketholders.

That idiot Heitzler, _he's_ the one who deserves the blame.

[Liz]

But has anyone ever seen Heitzler and Stallone together?

[Russfeld]

Yeah but who hired Heitzler...

[brightline]

kind of off subject but stallone drove a pacwest car in driven. they're gone also. coincidence?

[Russfeld]

So are all the drivers imitated in the move

[Sato san]

Originally posted by rpolinski
Has anyone else noticed that the start of Cart's decline co-incided with the release of Driven.

i never thought of it like that....so were going to Blame Stallone for that as well a making probally the worse film ive ever seen...

sound fair enough to me !

[f1manoz]

I'd blame Heitzler as well. He may have been hired, but it was his stupid decisions that have cost CART millions in dollars and exposure.

Thank goodness we now have a guy in Pook who can run things and get the series back on track.

[The Snout]

Heitzler f*cked up Cart when he dicked around on Texas, dicked around on the boost issue at Detroit, dicked around with announcing the 3.5 n/a formula, dicked around allowing the month of May to be left entirely free for Indy. Thank god those responsible of Heitzler have left, and Cart's man of the year Pook is flying the kite. If they didn't pick Pook it would've be over in 3 races time.

BTW, what avg lap speeds were Cart pulling at Texas last year ? Perhaps with all these Jap manufacturers in the IRL they might push development so hard that the IRL are in danger themselves next year.

[Lee Janotta]

IRL drivers are already in serious danger.

Though there are a couple traitors who might deserve it...

[Liz]

Nothing worse than a good scare, we hope. However, I'm ready to go down there with a big sign that says WHO'S THE COWARD NOW? if they do repeat history.

[Down F0rce]

i thought Driven was great!

[Flatspot]

Sorry to hear that DF. IMHO Driven sucked big time. Did the movie create CART's problems? No. But it certainly hasn't done anything to help things either. Two Thumbs Down.

[Speedworx]

Joe Heitzler and Tony George are to blame. Also the engine manufacturers are to blame as they got picky as to who they supplied engines to. Its why Della Penna and AAR left, as no one would give them an engine.

Its nothing to do with the good Stallone movie.

[macdaddy]

CART's decline can be traced back even before Joe H. Let me use Michigan as a case-in-point. From 92-95 the place was rockin'. The campgrounds across the street were full and the Saturday night party went on until daybreak. The grandstands that were open were full. When I returned in 96, the crowds were there, and it was the second race at the track that year! I missed the race in 98, the year that fans were killed by an errant wheel. But when I went back in 99, the place seemed empty. At first I blamed it on the tragedy of the year before, but things never got better.

Joe H just made things worse. Way worse.

[Liz]

Why do you think things didn't get better? I was honestly unaware of that as I don't like ovals, but I'd be interested to hear any thoughts anyone has.

Seriously, if making a bad movie would destroy a racing series, NASCAR would be in the septic tank after "Days of Blunder." It didn't help -- especially with Some Other Websites getting involved big time in promoting it as the Saviour of the Series -- but if the series wasn't aleady floundering it would not have been more than a blip on the radar.

[macdaddy]

Ya know Liz, I've been asking that question for years. My theory that the tragedy of 98 scared the fans away was misplaced. So why didn't they come? We've discussed in the past the fact that the Michigan date received no publicity and no advertising. Blame that on the promoter of that one single event. But the phenomena seems to have spread to all of the ovals. One can only blame NASCAR, I suppose. Can't really blame the IRL, at least in MIS's case, because they haven't drawn a crowd either. And you can't blame the racing. Since the race that I missed in 98 (because my daughter was but a few days old), I've witnessed:

99 - A breathtaking early race between Montoya and Andretti, with Papis eventually taking control, and Kanaan picking up the pieces. Margin of victory was .032 over Montoya. Ten thousand lead changes.

00 - Montoya and Andretti picked up right where they left off, battling lap after lap, Helio taking a big lead in the middle stages but falling aside, and Juan edging Michael by .040. Ten thousand and two lead changes.

01 - Again the Handford makes for a great show, as Carpentier comes out of nowhere and edges Franchitti and Jordain by less than a quarter-second. P2 was photo-finish down to the 1/1000th of a second.

So what happened at Michigan? And everywhere else?

[Liz]

Maybe it's just true that people don't want to see open wheel cars race on ovals ... they want to see "stock cars" (as Chris Pook calls them) race on ovals. Not all people of course because some people still did attend the big oval races. But they seem to draw about 25% of the audience that the street races draw. Maybe because you just have to sit still and watch and we are a nation of wanderers? (I'm not, I watch from the media centre usually, but lots of people do like to move around and see different angles.)

[f1manoz]

I think it comes down the public perception on oval racing and open-wheeler racing. People just don't think it suits them anymore. Open-wheelers should be on road courses, NASCAR belongs on ovals, which I personally think is the case.

CART and Indycar have been on ovals for a long time, but obviously the public are not interested in seeing open-wheel cars on ovals anymore, except for Indy, but even crowds there are going down...

[Flatspot]

I tend to agree with F1manoz that open-wheelers tend to belong on road & street courses. I like the occasional oval and tend to believe they should keep a couple or three to maintain the diversity in CART but...
open-wheel cars can't do the bump and grind that stock cars can and that is the only thing that keeps a 200 lap oval race interesting.

I know there are a lot of open-wheel oval fans here and I don't want to offend but for me the typical long oval race is only interesting at the start and during the last 10-15 laps. Short ovals have been good in the past and not great lately hopefully, the revised aero package will fix that.

I'm not sure what any of this had to do with Rambo in a Racecar. Oh well...

[Liz]

I wish someone would do "The Making of Drivel" ... when I was at Sebring some of the Canadian Marshalls told us some hysterically funny stories about the stunt work as they were required to be there when the cars were running. It would make a much better movie than Drivel ever did.

[Russfeld]

Ive watched a few 'stunt drives' for like, PR pieces where the car is doing camera shots and pans and what not. There are some pretty wack stories, I cant imagine what a movie scene was like.

[silvervsix]

My fav bit of driven was when the pioneer car crashed twice in the same race thought that was well done by pioneer to get twice as much tv time.

[Liz]

I liked the fact that any car that was hit flew about 60 feet into the air. I think they must have put the wings on upside down.

[Russfeld]

My favorite part was learning that if you wanted to go faster you let the clutch out and applied more throttle. Seems incredibly logical, and beautiful in its simplicity